


Professional Assistance

by somehowunbroken



Category: Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1
Genre: Alternate Reality, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-15
Updated: 2011-08-15
Packaged: 2017-10-22 15:40:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/239645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somehowunbroken/pseuds/somehowunbroken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John cannot figure out what's wrong with this electric car.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Professional Assistance

**Author's Note:**

> For the Alternate Realities challenge at [](http://stargateland.livejournal.com/profile)[**stargateland**](http://stargateland.livejournal.com/).

“Sheppard,” Landry calls, clearly annoyed. John sighs, wondering what offense he’s managed to commit this time, as he dusts his hands off and rolls out from beneath the car. It’s a tiny one, so he’s got it up a little on the jacks, but he still prefers his board to walking around beneath a car pushed up toward the ceiling.

“Landry,” he returns evenly, trying to discreetly wipe the grease from his left hand on his coveralls. He’s been up inside a Nissan Leaf for most of the week, and he’s spent just as long being amazed by how the company has managed to rework the engine as he has swearing up a storm about how nothing works like he’s used to. Sure, he’s the one mechanic that Landry had chosen from the Atlantis Garage to go to the training for these new electric cars, but working on a simulation is nothing like actually being faced with one of the things that doesn’t work.

“Doctor Parrish called about his car,” Landry begins, and John barely holds back a snort. He likes Parrish; the guy is undeniably brilliant, but the fact that he’s a botanist who drives a bright green Leaf is not lost on John. John would bring it up if Parrish didn’t drop by at least once a week with the thing. It’s clearly not as reliable as the man had hoped it would be.

(John is pretty sure that Parrish is at least vaguely upset that he deals with John so often; Evan had handled most of the repairs on his last car, and John nether blind nor stupid.)

“If this were a normal car,” John says, “I’d say it was an issue with the fuel intake valve, order the part, and have it back to him already.” He shrugs a shoulder. “As it is, I’m kind of flying blind here. This isn’t one of the issues we covered in that training.”

“I know,” Landry huffs, as if John’s explanation is a waste of time. “Look, I called Nissan, and they’re sending out a specialist to give us a hand with this one, okay?”

John tries not to bristle, but there’s only so much he can do to mask his reaction. He’s damn good at his job, thanks much, and those assholes from Nissan are full of themselves, like their prissy electric car is just so damn great that there’s no need for gasoline-powered engines any more. There had only been one guy at the training seminar that John hadn’t wanted to punch wholeheartedly.

John hadn’t wanted to punch Cameron at all. That hadn’t been on the very long list of things he had decided he wanted to do to Cameron, nor on the sadly shorter list of things they’d managed to cram in between sessions.

Cameron, though, is based in Tennessee, working out of Nissan’s American headquarters. Atlantis is in Virginia, a garage in the middle of nowhere that won’t rank a senior certified technician for a simple repair on one damn electric car with an attitude problem.

John grits his teeth and tries to mentally prepare himself to try to learn something from whatever asshole will soon be invading his workspace. “When will this specialist be here?”

Landry checks his watch. “Let’s put it this way, Sheppard: take your lunch now, and make it a short one. I’m going to go ahead and authorize you for overtime on this project, so don’t worry about rushing it.” He hesitates. “Try not to kick this guy in the balls, okay? He’s here to help, and they said they’d send someone good.”

“That was _one time_ , Landry, and it was an _accident_ ,” John sighs, knowing that Landry either doesn’t believe him or just wants to get a rise out of John. Either way, Landry just shakes his head and shrugs a shoulder. “Fine. I’ll grab a sandwich and be back in half an hour, how’s that?”

“See if you can make it closer to twenty,” Landry advises as he walks back towards his office.

It’s fine. John has a sandwich in his locker, anyway.

Eighteen minutes later, John is rolling back beneath the Leaf. The thing is, he feels like he’s about five minutes away from figuring out where the problem is. It isn’t in the software, and it’s not in the engine block; there’s something with one of the valves that looks a little off, but nothing that would be causing this. He frowns up at the underbelly of the car. Really, he thinks, he should be able to figure this out.

“Hello?” a voice calls, friendly and warm, and John figures it’s probably connected to the pair of tan work boots that have stopped a foot or so from John’s position. “I’m from Nissan, here to lend a hand with this baby.”

Funny, John thinks as he rolls out, he sounds almost like-

The smile spreads across Cameron’s face as he gazes down at John. “Well, I’ll be.”

John grins right back as he stands. “Mitchell,” he greets, drawing Cameron in for a backslapping hug, which is enthusiastically returned. “I didn’t figure they’d be sending someone so high up the food chain.”

“I was in Fairfax for a training,” Cameron replies easily. “They asked me to pop on over here before heading back home.”

John nods and walks over to his terminal, pulling up the service records for the Leaf. “I thought I’d been keeping on top of everything, but I’m kind of stumped with this latest issue.” He gestures to the screen. “It’s not the first time I’ve seen the car, so I can say with a pretty high degree of certainty that the problem is new in the past two weeks.”

Cameron frowns as he scans through the service records. “Okay,” he finally says. “Let’s get underneath her and see if we can’t hunt down what’s going on.”

They roll under the Leaf and Cameron starts pointing things out, musing aloud about possible causes for the issue. John brings the faulty valve to his attention and Cameron nods, but agrees that it isn’t a part of this issue. After about an hour, he frowns and reached into the mess of wires dangling from the undercarriage, rooting around and coming up with one cased in yellow. John wracks his brain, but can’t recall what that particular wire leads to. It’s bigger than most of the others, though, so it’s probably an important one.

“I’d bet the wire is fried,” Cameron speculates. “Intermittent ignition in a car with a standard engine would be-”

“-the fuel intake, yeah,” John cuts in. He waves at the thick yellow wire that Cameron is tugging down. “That’s the equivalent?”

“Close enough to,” Cameron agrees. He reaches up again, both hands disappearing into the mass of wires, and a moment later there’s a click and the end of the wire swings down. Cameron pulls something out of his tool belt and plugs the wire into it. He hums a little in disapproval as the display blinks dully. “Yeah, this is it. There’s no reason for this supply cable to go so bad, though – there are redundancies wired into the package.” He raps his knuckles against the underside of the Leaf. “And you said this one has been in for more than a few repairs?”

“Seven that I’ve handled,” John confirms. “He’s only had the car since March.”

Cameron whistles. “Did he buy it brand-new?”

John nods. “Apparently, it’s the first new car he ever bought.”

“Tough break,” Cameron says with a wince. “And now the power supply has gone.”

John nods, wondering where Cameron is going with this. “What are you thinking?” he ventures after a moment of Cameron silently staring at the source of the issue.

“Let me check on something,” Cameron says abruptly, rolling out from beneath the car. He points up to the faulty valve that they’d discussed earlier. “Document that for me, okay?”

John nods and rolls out, grabbing a camera and a ruler. He’s just finishing the documentation photos when Cameron rolls back beneath the Leaf and grins.

“It’s a good thing you keep such detailed service reports,” he says. “I faxed everything to Jack, who’s swearing up and down that this made it off the production line somewhere. The company will replace the car for your customer.”

John’s face breaks into a grin. “You’re giving Parrish a new car?”

Cameron grins right back at him. “We are. We’ll have to work out a few details, and there will be papers to sign on all sides, but Jack says he can have a Leaf with the same specs as this one here in three days’ time. And,” he adds, his smile turning into more of a leer, “I’m supposed to stick around to make sure everything turns out as we plan.”

“Three days,” John repeats. “Anything else you’re supposed to do in the meantime?”

Cameron shakes his head. “Nothing official, but I’m sure we can come up with a way to pass the time.”

John leans carefully to avoid overbalancing on his board. “I’m sure we can,” he agrees, and then their lips are brushing, hot and heady and kind of perfect, the smell of oil and gasoline and grease, the streak John’s finger leaves across Cam’s cheekbone.

“Let’s call you customer,” Cam murmurs after a moment, “and then let’s grab a pizza and some beer and get gone.”

“There’s a plan I can get behind,” John grins. “Lead the way.”


End file.
